EPISODE 1 — The 15% Payoff: Chips, China, and Cold War 2.0

My final thoughts before my break from podcasting. Hopefully we can get a YouTube channel set up, but its evident audio formatting is a challenge.

Teaching your kid about credit is like teaching them todrive—except the crashes are invisible and the seatbelt is made of dollarsigns.Here, we’ll set the stage: why it’s crucial to give kids a head start on credit, especially when the economy is doing a cha-cha between boom and bust.

For the better part of a decade, a movement has chipped away at America’s cultural backbone—relabeling, rebranding, and erasing pieces of history in the name of “progress.” From the Washington Redskins to Aunt Jemima, icons tied to real communities and cultural roots have been stripped away, replaced with hollow slogans and corporate tokenism. In this episode, we ask: does erasing the past help us, or does it hollow out the very soul of what it means to be American?

The Opening Hand- U.S. firms still hold the technology ace — leading-edge AIchips.- China is short-stacked but aggressively building its ownfab capacity.- The 15% levy is the buy-in to stay in the China gamewithout being banned outright.**Mic-Drop Joke:** We’re not just playing poker — we’reselling the other guy the deck, the chips, and the dealer’s manual.

The Deal Nobody Saw ComingTechnicals:Nvidia & AMD agree to give 15% of AI chip export revenue to the U.S. government.The chips in question: Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 — high-end AI processors restricted under earlier security rules.Deal follows a closed-door White House meeting between Jensen Huang and President Trump.

The 401k was never designed to be your soleretirement plan—it was meant to supplement pensions, not replace them.Median 401k balance for people in their 60s?Around $112,000.-Companies love 401ks because they offload all responsibility onto the employee

The Virtue Volcano: When Beauty Sparks OutrageThe American Eagle ad should’ve been just that—an ad. A beautiful model, a simple statement: “good genes.” But here comes the pitchfork parade, led by the purple-haired Twitter tribunal. Suddenly it’s a civil rights emergency because…a pretty person exists?

Tariff Tsunami: The Whales Forgot Their FloatiesThe market caught a headline about tariffs and immediately folded like a lawn chairin a windstorm. 35% on Canadian goods. 25% on Mexico. And the crowd goes wild—by “wild” I mean institutional investors projectile-vomiting theirportfolios into the ether.

Everything Code" theory—unpacking why traditional recessions might be a thing of the past in a world fueled by debt, liquidity cycles, and financial engineering. We explore how bond yields, the Fed’s constraints, and monetary expansion impact markets, and why Bitcoin, gold, and Ethereum are flashing signals for a new economic era. From interest payment traps to why the SPY may not build wealth, this podcast connects the dots between macro indicators and market behavior. It's a high-level but accessible roadmap for investors trying to decode where we’re headed next—and why everything feels rigged.

In this episode of Year of the Cow, we break down South Park’s latest billion-dollar swing at Donald Trump—and what it says about the future of media. As the show reclaims its crown as the sharpest satire on TV, Stephen Colbert’s late-night legacy may be crumbling under the weight of mergers, fatigue, and irrelevance. We explore why Trump can’t sue South Park, how Comedy Central bet big on irreverence, and what Colbert’s rumored exit means for old-school political comedy. It’s parody versus presidency, and only one seems to be aging well. Spoiler: it’s not the one with a desk.